First published as a series of articles in the London Magazine in 1821, Confessions of an English Opium Eater is the fascinating autobiography of the English addict, Thomas de Quincey. Partly an autobiography, partly a report of the pleasures and pains of recreational drug use, it provides a powerful and eccentric window into the world of narcotics at a time when the West was still grappling with how to deal with these mind-bending substances.